Labour has tried desperately to protect Annette King, her husband and her husband’s boss and it isn’t working.

It isn’t working because the Hawke’s Bay is a close knit and loyal community. They won’t be hushed up by an out of control and arrogant minister and they won’t be silenced by bullying lawyers.

The husband of Cabinet Minister Annette King is the subject of a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner, as fallout continues from the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board saga.

Deborah Houston, who blew the whistle on an alleged conflict of interest over a $50 million health contract, said she was “gobsmacked” that Ray Lind, the board’s former chief operating officer and King’s husband, secretly taped a conversation between them in 2006.

Houston has laid a complaint with the office of Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff. She met Lind shortly after she exposed an alleged conflict of interest but didn’t know of the recording until Lind told her lawyer last August. Houston said she was in a stressed and fragile state at the time and wants an apology from Lind.

It isn’t illegal to tape conversations but it just adds to the stench of the whole situation that some rather dodgy dealings were going on at HBDHB and that King, her husband and Hausmannn are up to their eyeballs in it.

I note that Lind did not “volunteer” that he had taped the interview until about one year later!

I also understand that others have expressed concern that they may have been taped. It raises legitimate questions about exactly how many people have been taped by Lind?

It was only after forensics audits revealed transcripts of conversations, from presumably, recordings of conversations by Lind and others.

Lind’s story just doesn’t stack up, people I know that regularly work 80 hours a week do not need to record in such a way, it isn’t exactly normal practice.

Calls should be shortly coming for a full investigation into the dodgy dealings of Hausmann, Lind and King as the evidence mounts.